Pre-Flight Checklist: Define the Problem (Post #1 of 20)

What's the Problem We Are Trying to Solve?

Isolated success can’t scale. Build the AI adoption framework first.

Anyone who has worked with me since my years at Intuit will hear me ask, “What’s the problem we are trying to solve?"

The most expensive mistake companies and individuals are making right now is trying to automate a process that they haven’t bothered to define. You hear about the speed of AI and panic-buy a tool, only to find the results are generic, inaccurate, or worse, violate every security policy your company has evangelized.

Have you ever noticed, whether it’s yourself, teammates or a leader, that the tendency when faced with a new challenge is to immediately start drafting solutions?

Stop trying to solve a process problem with an AI tool.

It’s the single biggest error I see with leaders facing a challenge. Myself included. It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement and start creating solutions where you save the day. Before you can blink, there are passionate executive leadership emails about a shiny object with no specific direction other than, “do this and do it fast.” People are scrambling. Your AI chatbot is firing on all cylinders. You quickly find yourself in an echo chamber with very strong opinions offering solutions that are all solving different problems. This is when your voice is heard over all of the noise and chaos, “Let’s get clear on what problem we are trying to solve.”

Future-proofing your business starts with asking the right questions.

3 Steps for Problem Clarity

1. Define the mission: “What is the problem we are trying to solve? (Be specific. “Lack of clean data” not “We need a faster chatbot.”)

2. Define the alignment: “What does success look like?” (Be specific. “We have a single source of truth and pure data for AI Agents to leverage.”)

3. Define the high-level metric: “How will you measure success?” (Be specific. “Success is measured by how many hallucinations/mistakes is generated from the data.”)

Test Flight - “Marker Exercise”

Try this simple exercise today to test the theory. (You can do this in under 10 minutes!)

1. Assemble leaders, or your team, together in a room with a whiteboard.

2. Read the latest directional email aloud.

3. Each leader gets a marker and stands by the whiteboard.

4. Start a timer for 60 seconds and have each answer the question, “What is the problem we are trying to solve?”

5. When time is up, have each person read their answer to the team.

Mission Debrief

How did it go? Did everyone have the same answers?

Getting clear on the problem you’re trying to solve is a force multiplier and gets all of your resources moving in sync. If you have five different problem statements, then your resources are already scattered. The next question to ask is, “What would have to be true for this to work?” Brainstorm. Challenge assumptions. Test your theories.

I included one of my favorite movie clips from Apollo 13 above because it clearly demonstrates why these questions are critical for success. Plus, I really just love that movie.

Editor’s note: Since many teams are remote, this works well virtually too. Use the “chat” window in your video collaboration tool and have everyone hit “enter” at the 60 second mark so they all show up at the same time.

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